Snam and Baker Hughes team up on hydrogen

In November, Snam, an energy infrastructure company, operating in natural gas transport and storage, and Baker Hughes, an energy technology company, tested the use of hydrogen as a fuel to power gas turbines at one of its natural gas compression stations.

According to the report, the tests, carried out in Istrana, Italy, by Snam and Baker Hughes, with Saipem and Max Streicher as technology partners, and Siad, which supplied the hydrogen, confirmed the compatibility of the turbines used in the plant with a blend of 10% hydrogen and natural gas.

The tests involved Baker Hughes turbines, the “hydrogen-ready,” NovaLT12, and designed for operation with natural gas, PGT25, which was already in use in the plant.

Istrana plant, one of 13 compression stations along Italy’s gas transportation network, is the first Italian compression station in which a “hydrogen-ready” turbine has been installed.

Snam said that it plans to continue its collaboration with turbine suppliers with the aim of extending hydrogen compatibility tests to its entire turbocompressor fleet, and that by introducing hydrogen, a greater reduction in CO2 can be expected.

The energy infrastructure company first experimented with the injection of hydrogen, first at 5% and subsequently at 10%, into a section of its high-pressure gas transport network in 2019, and in 2020, it carried out the tests of the NovaLT12 turbine with hydrogen up to 10% blended with natural gas at the Baker Hughes plant in Florence, Italy.

Snam is also conducting studies on the compatibility of its storage sites with hydrogen, with the goal to complete the assessment of its entire infrastructure.

Baker Hughes, a provider of solutions to energy and industrial customers worldwide, has been working on hydrogen solutions for a while.

In 2021, it started collaborating with Bloom Energy, a distributed energy company, on hydrogen solutions to advance the energy transition.

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